China Daily Global Edition (USA)
From rural backwater to ideas factory
Nation’s second-biggest broadcaster has global reach.
In a little over two decades, Malanshan has been transformed from a rural backwater on the outskirts of Changsha, the capital of Central China’s Hunan province, into a thriving producer of cutting-edge television shows.
Since 1994, it has been home to Hunan Broadcasting System, the country’s second-biggest broadcaster, which reported revenue of 18.3 billion yuan ($2.63 billion) last year, and total assets of nearly 30 billion yuan.
HBS, second only to Staterun giant China Central Television, launched its local television station — Hunan TV — on Jan 1, 1970. Owned by the Hunan provincial government, it has since extended its programming from news coverage to variety shows, dramas and comedies, and went on to establish a nationwide foothold through satellite television in 1997.
Its shows are now available in over 200 countries and regions around the world, with an audience encompassing 14.5 million overseas Chinese.
Zhang Huali, an HBS vicepresident and also the broadcaster’s editor-in-chief, said it has succeeded by emphasizing the importance of ideas and embracing new media platforms. In more than 30 years working at HBS, starting as a reporter, he has seen it blossom from humble beginnings.
“It was a painful infancy, but memorable to me,” he said, recalling a distinctly unglamorous working environment in its former studios near the city’s zoo.
“The broadcaster has experienced times of hardship, and also the booms, with utmost determination for reform. Now, its focus is to switch from entertainment to the promotion of the arts and values.”
Competitive edge
Zhang said reform and competition have been central to HBS’ success story.
“The first round came in 1994, stirring up the bland system at the time with the establishment of Hunan Economic Television Station,” he said.
The station, an HBS affiliate that was the brainchild of Wei Wenbin, then director of the Hunan Radio and Television Bureau, first went to air the following year on the back of 28 million yuan in bank loans, with Ouyang Changlin as its first president. It soon developed a strong rivalry with Hunan TV, HBS’s satellite TV station, despite only being available to viewers in Hunan.
“It was unbelievable how fierce the competition was between Hunan TV and Economic TV at the time,” said Wang Han, a senior host who has worked for HBS since 1996. “My peers even slept at the station and kept a close watch on the staff at Hunan TV in case they released more attractive programs.”
Wang said it felt like staff were on duty 24 hours a day.
“I still remember Ouyang Changlin bringing us takeout meals at midnight as we set up stages in order to present a better show and beat Hunan TV,” he said.
The extremely fierce competition inspired the staff at Economic TV, Wang said. “The competition pushed us to continuously propose new ideas and make programs that were attractive to our audience.”
It paid off, with Economic TV’s ratings peaking at 60 percent for its news coverage and early variety shows such as Lucky 3721.
Zhang said, jokingly, “There was a popular saying among people in Hunan that those native to the province watched Economic TV’s programs, while viewers outside the province watched Hunan TV.”
But he said the rivalry between the two TV stations intensified into cutthroat competition, which hindered the ideas-driven development of HBS, and discontent and complaints were by 2000.
In response, HBS embarked on two further rounds of reform, in 2002 and 2010, to position itself as more of an international content provider. A range of well-received shows and programs have been launched since, including the hit Hunan TV talent show Super Girls.
Driven by ideas
commonplace
Zhang said innovation and creativity have always been key to HBS’ development. “We live for new ideas or die,” he said.
The broadcaster enjoyed overnight success with Super Girls, a talent show featuring female singers that first aired in 2004. It was the first such show in the Chinese mainland and shot a batch of grassroots stars to fame, including Li Yuchun, who won the first series.
“We produced the nation’s first current affairs show, Focus, in 1983, which even attracted a group of producers and reporters from China Central Television to learn from and report from Changsha, Hunan province. The Sound, us,” Zhang said. “Innovation has been engraved in our DNA since the establishment of the broadcaster to help us stand out and impress the audience.”
HBS also keeps channeling new ideas to reinvigorate established hits such as Happy Camp, a variety show that debuted on July 7, 1997.
The show, broadcast every Saturday, features celebrities and stars from home and abroad and is hosted by the “Happy Family” — He Jiong, Xie Na, Li Weijia, Du Haitao and Wu Xin.
It has remained in production for 21 years thanks to its high viewership and consistent rewriting of ratings records. The show now reaches an audience of tens of millions in China and overseas, according to HBS.
Producer Liu Wei, who has been in charge of Happy Camp for 16 years, said, “The show has a tradition that we offer no remuneration to the guests or celebrities.”
He said the reason for the variety show’s high viewership and its appeal to celebrity guests was that it presented its Happy Camp audience with different, novel things in an interesting way and brought happiness to viewers.
“We’ve combined scientific knowledge with games and have included traditional Chinese culture, such as intangible cultural heritage like paper cutting, in the games,” he said.
“It’s a show for all age groups. No matter if they’re 5 or nearly 60, they can feel the love we stream in a funny way. It’s hard to maintain the vigor and keep coming up with new ideas; in fact it’s a challenge. But we’ve made it in the past 20 years, and it will be even better in the future.”
Zhang said making a successful show requires craftsmanship and originality.
“We endeavor to make a batch of quality programs committed to originality and positivity that show the values and culture of modern times,” he said. “I think one show, The Sound, is a good example.”
The Sound, broadcast every Saturday night, is an HBS variety show in which actors, actresses and voice actors embellish clips from movies, cartoons and sports shows by dubbing their own dialogue onto them.
Launched on Jan 26 and with its final episode airing on March 17, the show was China’s top-rating one for 11 weeks and also attracted 1.4 billion views online.
The Sound was one of nine original Chinese programs introduced at the International Market for Content Development and Distribution in Cannes, France, on April 7. Another was CCTV’s National Treasure, which tells the stories behind cultural relics.
Luo Xi, director of HBS’ research and development center, said, “The Sound helped attract attention to original shows by Hunan Broadcasting System from around the world.”
HBS set up the center in late 2016 and launched a plan in July last year to help generate more original programs. Over 600 proposals for new programs have been received and are now being scrutinized.
Internet initiative
The broadcaster has also been exploring ways to rejuvenate its programs by making full use of the internet and new media platforms.
“Traditional media like TV stations did get affected by new media and the rapid development of the web,” said Yang Zhuang, another HBS vice-president. “But we tried our best to minimize the negative impact.”
Zhang said the traditional media “should be brave enough to be the boss of new media”.
HBS launched its own online content provider, imgo.tv, for tablet and smartphone users in 2014. Its video clips receive an average of 230 million clicks a day and it made a net profit of 489 million yuan last year, HBS said.
An international version of the mobile app was launched in Hong Kong in March, and imgo.tv vice-president Yi Keming said it has also established connections with Facebook and YouTube to introduce HBS programs to other countries and regions.
Zhang said, “We were seen as an underdog when we announced the launch of our own online content platform.”
He said Happy Camp had been sold to another online content provider, iQiyi, for 200 million yuan in 2014, but HBS had since forgone hundreds of millions of yuan in copyright royalties to put all its original shows and TV series on imgo.tv.
“We’ve seen the reward,” he said. “We now have nearly 580 million followers for the mobile app, and have been listed as one of the world’s 500 largest media companies by World Media Lab for the past three years. Though we still lag platforms launched earlier, such as Tencent and Youku, by a long way, we are building a platform that’s assisted by a broadcaster’s superiority in content innovation.”
imgo.tv. explains how to operate its online content provider, HBS vice-president and editor-in-chief
their native dialect can quickly boost familiarity and make them relaxed during an interview.”
He borrowed 5 million yuan ($720,400) from his wife, fellow HBS host Yang Lele, to set up a dialect-protection workshop that now has about 70 members, jokingly calling it an “interest-free loan”.
“We plan to collect dialects from 57 sites in Hunan in the next five to 10 years, recording their sounds and donating them to the Hunan Museum,” he said. “I hope that in maybe 300 or 500 years, young people will be able to hear their ancestors’ using dialect for everyday words. It will be amazing.”
Wang Han was honored by UNESCO for his contribution to protecting dialects in China at an international conference on the role of linguistic diversity in building a global community with a shared future that was held in Changsha in September.